Dana Stabenow - So Sure Of Death

Prince looked hurt. “He saw the skiff coming out of Kulukak Bay, too,” she said stiffly.

“So we've got two witnesses. All the better.”

“He saw it three hours earlier.”

A short, charged silence. Liam wanted to lay his head- carefully-in his arms and close his eyes for the next month. “At midnight.”

“Right around.”

“He's sure of the time?”

Prince cleared her throat. “He was-ah-trysting with Edith Pomeroy on the deck of his boat at the time.”

“And-ah-trysting with Ms. Pomeroy was such a memorable event that he was looking at his watch?”

“Mrs. Mrs. Edith Pomeroy. Ralph Pomeroy's wife. Ralph is a local fisher.”

Liam looked at Prince, who was looking prim as a Victorian spinster. Maybe his father had slept alone the night before after all.

His father… Something nagged at the back of his mind. What was it, his father and-his father and… he couldn't remember. The walrus head on the opposite wall seemed to be laughing, head raised, ivory tusks ready to strike. “And he was persuaded to share this information-how, exactly?”

“I-ah-overheard him telling a couple of his friends about it. On my way back to theSnohomish Belle.About seven friends, actually. It seems Mrs. Pomeroy had been pretty elusive, and Mr. Wassillie was-er-collecting debts now owed him.”

“I'm surprised he noticed the skiff.”

“Apparently Mr. Wassillie thought it might be Mr. Pomeroy in search of his wife.”

In spite of the throbbing of his skull, Liam had to smile. “You know, there sure were a hell of a lot of boats wandering around out there in the fog that night.”

“It moves in, it moves out.” Prince shrugged. “We keep finding holes to land through.”

Liam repressed a shiver. “Don't remind me. Who was it? In the skiff? Who did Wassillie see?”

“He described a skiff-a dory, excuse me, a New England dory, a big skiff about twenty feet long. If not the twin, then very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

“Did he see who was in it?”

Prince didn't even try to hide her triumphant smile. “A man very similar to the one Donohoe saw.”

They sat in silence for a moment, digesting this. “So he went out twice?”

“It would explain the two hours between the shootings and the fire.”

“Yes, but why? Why go out twice?”

With some asperity, Prince said, “This is a man who can kill one woman for leaving him, one man for having her and three men and two kids for being there when it happened. I don't think we can expect rational thought from someone like that. I don't think we have to.”

Mike Ekwok skidded in the door. “Sheriff!” he cried.

“It's Trooper,” Liam said tiredly.

Ekwok saw Liam's shiner and the lump that was giving his cap a rakish tilt and his eyes widened. “What happened, Sheriff?”

Liam gave in. “Somebody coldcocked me when my deputy wasn't watching my back.”

Prince looked offended, but Mike Ekwok's round face hardened into determined lines. “I'll back you up, Sheriff.”

“Thanks, Deputy.” Liam got to his feet, carefully avoiding Prince's gaze. “Are Wassillie and Donohoe somewhere around?”

“They're waiting on board theCheyenne.”

Liam spoke more sharply than he intended. “They're not in the same room, are they?”

“There's an old guy watching them. I snagged him off the dock and told him to stand guard, not let them talk.”

The walrus leered at him from the wall. “The old man,” Liam said suddenly. That's what he'd been trying to remember. “ Walter Larsgaard's father. Is he here? In the house?”

“I… don't know. I didn't look.”

“Well, look. Mike, help her.”

Ekwok sprang into action. Five minutes later they were back. “House is empty, Sheriff.”

“Did you check everywhere? Closets, basement, attic?”

“It's a crawl space, not a basement, and there is no attic.” Prince's expression was quizzical. “Why?”

“I don't know, I…” Again Liam thought of his father. “Damn it, there's something I'm missing-wait a minute.”

“What-”

Liam silenced Prince with a wave of his hand. His father. Don Nelson's father. Frank Petla's ancestral fathers, tribal fathers, his real father, his adopted father. Walter Larsgaard's father. Fathers and sons. Sons and their fathers, and what they did to each other, and what they did for each other. He remembered something he'd read in Don Nelson's journal, and his own reaction to it, and suddenly he understood. “Mike?”

“Yessir?”

“Are you a good friend of Walter Larsgaard, Senior?”

Mike's face showed his bewilderment. “I guess so. I've known Old Walter since we were kids.”

“That's not what I asked. Were you friends?”

“We've lived in the same village all our lives.”

Liam sighed. “Never mind. Did he drink?”

Ekwok shuffled his feet and looked at the floor.

“Mike-Deputy,” Liam said sternly, “this is important. Was Old Walter a drinker?”

Ekwok shuffled some more and looked everywhere but at Liam. “I guess he'd been known to knock back a few Olys,” he muttered finally.

“He do it often?”

“No more than anybody else.”

“Does he or his son own a big skiff? A New England dory, a twenty-footer?”

Relieved to be off the hook, Ekwok gave an eager nod. “Sure. Nice big dory, new last summer. Twenty-one feet long. You could get to Togiak in it if you had to.”

“Is it in the harbor?”

“I guess.”

“Did you know Walter Junior was sleeping with Molly Malone?”

Mike Ekwok's face showed first surprise, and then envy. “No kidding? That lucky-” He turned whatever he'd been about to say into a cough. “No, Sheriff, I didn't know that.”

“How would Walter Senior have felt about that?”

“I-hell, I don't know. He didn't poke his nose into much, Old Walter. He minded his own business, and he let people mind theirs. He was a good neighbor.” Mike Ekwok sounded as if he had only just learned this fact, and was surprised that it was so.

“Sir-” Prince said.

“Did Wassillie say if the guy was rowing the dory, or if he had the outboard going?”

Prince consulted her notes. “Rowing.”

“That matches the Jacobsons' statements. But Donohoe said the dory he saw had the kicker running.”

Comprehension dawned. “Two different boats.”

Liam shook his head. “The same boat. Two different men.” He leaned his aching head on one hand. “I'm in his house,” he muttered, staring at the walrus head. It wasn't leering now. “Who else would hit me?”

“Who do you think did?” Prince said, but she knew. So did Ekwok if his open mouth and staring eyes were any indication.

“Old Walter, that's who. He was in the first skiff, the one Jacobson saw going out, the one Wassillie saw coming in. He shot the crew of theMarybethia,and then he came home and either told his son what he'd done or his son guessed. Young Walter went out to destroy the evidence, and that's who Donohoe saw.”

Prince stared at him, mouth slightly open.

“Young Walter must have been frantic to get rid of the evidence. He set fire to the boat, but it wouldn't burn, so then he tried to sink her. He must have been pretty sure he'd succeeded because he left to go back into town.”

They left Ekwok behind in their run for the boat harbor. In spite of his aching head and the accompanying slight sense of disorientation, Liam was first down the gangway when they arrived, and first to step on board theCheyenne.So it followed that he was the first to see the bodies.

“Son of a bitch!” Prince's voice rang out across the harbor. She leapt first to one downed man, then the other. “Mother-fucking son of a BITCH!”